Giant rats in UK

[MoonSylver]

Rodents of unusual size? I don't believe they exist.

[Wyldwraith]

Rat hunting? Sure. Killed in excess of 7,500 by the time I was 12. Shoot them in the head with a pellet from a pellet rifle to stun them, then give them a good stomp. (copper beebees don't seem to have the same effect as the little lead hourglass-shaped pellets). The real diehard kids I knew used the heavy-duty slingshots to hunt the bastards at the local dump/landfill. Screw that. Gotta get close enough they could rush you, or their fleas could jump on and bite you with a slingshot. Yes, Florida 18 years ago was a savage backward place. If you didn't live in the Panhandle or South Florida areas, you were in the mostly undeveloped middle full of legions of creepy-crawlies. My stepdad used to give me 10$ for every Armadillo I killed with a .22 when I was 14-15. THAT'S HARD. Bastards are the Bradley Fighting Vehicles of the animal kingdom.

[wayzim]

He wrote a trilogy. I read them all when I was about 13 or 14, absolutely loved the series. Didn't remember this as a series, but I absolutely thought Rats to be pretty bad. Or maybe it was the scene with a couple gays going at it before being killed. This was also the first and only book of mine that Dad had ever chucked in the trash after reading it. He apologized later. I like James Herbert in general, The Fog and The Dark are first rate, but Rats? Not so much. There was at least one attempt to film it, Deadly Eyes(82) with Sam Groom, a very loose adaption that had dachshund hounds in rat costumes( I kid you not ) Wayne Z

[bassman]

[Chic Freak]

The rodents the ratzilla is supposed to be descended from look more like beavers, they don't have that pointy nose that rats have. I'd quite like one of the coypu rats as pets, they look cute ^^ Sewer rats are pretty vile though, and surprisingly big and heavy. We had an infestation at one of my student houses when I was at uni and one ran over my foot while I was cooking dinner in the kitchen I was all up for setting humane traps for them then driving into the countryside to release them up until that point. Then I was like, "rat catcher time!" Field rats are nice, though. We had one in my parents' garden that used to come and eat the seed that fell off the bird table and we called him Roland. After a while we had Roland, Mrs Roland and then several baby Rolands coming to snack in our garden everyday (They never came in the house.)

[Tricky]

Wild rats are pretty disgusting creatures though, they leak urine constantly & spread some pretty nasty diseases like Weils disease, not to mention the good ol' Bubonic plague back in the 1600's! Sometimes at night round where I live you see literally hundreds of them dashing across the country lanes, its like a sea of them! We have several cats on the farm that do a good job of keeping numbers down though, I just wish they wouldnt rip the bloody things apart on the bonnet of my car

[BillyRay]

In the interest of a balanced debate, I give you: Awwwwwwwww...a rat!

[AcesandEights]

In the interest of a balanced debate, I give you: Awwwwwwwww...a rat! That's adorable, I have to admit.

[dracenstein]

My cat ate a rat outside my back door a couple weeks back, peeling back the skin to crunch through the skull to eat the brain. The sound was horrible to listen to... At least the rat was dead at the time. We often find headless rats and sometimes just the rats' heads in the backyard. James Herbert rats trilogy was Rats, Lair and Domain, I liked all of them. He also wrote a graphic novel with the rats in called The City, which I haven't been able to get.